oughtn't to be left up here alone near such a baby-eater as I am. I
wish you'd come up and see about her. If you don't come alone, get
Mrs. Williams, or my friend, Matthews.

Calamity went on down the Ridge and Wayland plunged at his mail. On
the very top of the pile lay a newspaper in a folder marked with red
"Important." Before the pole cat begins operations, he chooses his
target. For myself, I think discretion is better than valor in such a
case, and you would do well to retreat and let the little genus
Mephitis Mephitica infect the air for his own benefit; but Wayland did
not know what was coming and tore the paper open and read. Then he
flung it from him and stood looking with blazing eyes at the thing on
the floor.

"Read it," he said.

The old frontiersman got his glasses laboriously out of the case and
began to read. The sun was behind the Holy Cross, and he stood in the
door to get the light on the paper. When he had finished and looked
round, he saw Wayland sitting crunched forward with his face in his
hands.

"Wayland, man," he slapped him twice on the shoulder, "look up, look up
at that picture on the wall above y'r bed."

Wayland took his hands from his eyes. The Alpine glow struck through
the doorway against the picture on the wall, the picture she had had
Calamity bring down surreptitiously and had sent back framed, the
picture of the face above the Warrior.

"Man alive, why w'd y' care for the devil's dirt and skunk stench and
snake venom, when y' have, when y' have That? She's a--a trump! She's
a thoroughbred! Man, y'd know she had th' blood o' Scottish kings and
queens in her veins. Y'll no go down to-night, Wayland, when y'r all
undone! 'Twould hurt her. A intended tellin' her to-night why A came;
but A'll not now! A'll not now! She must not run from this scandal.
She must face it down before she goes, but A'll go an' see her father
an' come back an' tell y'. Cheer up man! 'Tis part o'the fight."

And for the only time in the struggle, Wayland let go; or rather--his
manhood got from under leash. You can be stoical all right when _you_
get the blow. It's another thing to be stoical when the blow hits what
you love. When the curtain-drop fell on Moyese, it fell on a man
pounding the desk, kicking furniture, eating up the telephone, turning
the air blue. It fell on the Ranger sitting crunched in his chair
gazing through misty eyes at a picture painted by an artist, who